stages (when the wheel breaks the butterfly)
by TheVerbalThing ComesAndGoes
Summary: "I've been through this before…losing somebody close to me way too soon." She's been grieving her whole life, she thinks. Amelia and the five stages of grief as she copes with the loss of her brother.


stages (when the wheel breaks the butterfly)

summary: "I've been through this before…losing somebody close to me way too soon." She's been grieving her whole life, she thinks. (Amelia and the five stages of grief.)

disclaimer: some dialogue taken from _Grey's Anatomy_ (and _Private Practice)_ episodes. Lyrics below belong to " _Paradise"_ by Coldplay

 **A/N** : tried breaking this into chapters, but it didn't flow right...there are some mentions of _Private Practice_ characters and arcs, though I did my best not to make it confusing for anyone who hasn't seen it. reviews are much appreciated.

* * *

 _._

 _When she was just a girl, she expected the world  
but it flew away from her reach_

 _(and) the bullets catch in her teeth.  
_

 _Life goes on, it gets so heavy  
(and) The wheel breaks the butterfly  
_

.

He's hovering, she realizes.

It's (almost) equally as amusing as it is annoying; Amelia can practically feel Owen's presence behind her, even though he's standing in the doorway of the scrub room, which is a few feet away. She takes a moment, breathing in deeply and then quickly exhaling through her nose.

She'd actually been hoping to avoid this: that period of residual weirdness after their non-relationship ended faster than it started, but of course, it seems she's not that lucky. She can see him, out of the corner of her eye, obviously wanting to talk to her but probably unsure about how he should approach. But still, Amelia doesn't turn to face him, or to try to make this any easier for either of them.

(She has always been so much better at making things more difficult.)

"…Did you need something?" she asks without looking at him. He doesn't answer, not right away, and so she continues scrubbing, buying herself some time.

(Later, it will come to her that she should have known then - in the exact moment that Owen hesitated. She should have seen it, somehow, in the way that his mouth opened and closed before setting into a grim line as he reached out a hand before stopping himself - that something was wrong. It wouldn't have changed anything but still, she should have seen it coming.)

But she didn't see it. Amelia didn't see anything different about the way Callie asked Edwards if they could talk outside. She didn't see the devastation in Callie's eyes or the defeat and sorrow written all over Owen's face - only because she wasn't looking for it then. (And hindsight, as they say, is twenty-twenty.)

It didn't help that Owen wasn't looking at her, that he couldn't look her in the eye until the last possible second, when it seemed as if he had no other choice. "…Maybe we should, uh, have this conversation in my office," is all that he says once his gaze finally meets hers.

"Look, Owen, I really don't have time for-" One glance upward and everything changes. Everything stops. Her heart skips a beat and she stops scrubbing once her eyes meet his, her hands falling still underneath the running water before slowly pulling away and allowing it to shut off. The look on Owen's face says it all - long before his mouth even forms the words. Amelia breathes in, but it's a shallow, shuddering inhale; the sudden lump that forms in her throat makes breathing a lot more difficult. Immediately, her mind runs down the list of faces belonging to the people whose loss she would be most affected by: colleagues, patients, friends, family…

"…Who died?" she asks, wasting no time on finesse or tact. Owen has the decency to at least look caught, his mouth hanging open in a tiny "O" of surprise and uncertainty.

She doesn't ( _can't_ ) breathe in the silence that follows and Amelia swears that her heart stops.

"I know that face. And I have been here before. Everyone thinks they are the first person in the world to look at someone like that, but it's _always_ the same face. … _Who is dead,_ Owen?" she demands and suddenly she's not just terrified of what his answer will be, she's _angry_. She needs him to spit it out, now, to rip off the band aid and get this over with.

 _"…Derek."_ His voice breaks, trailing off into this almost inaudible sound of sorrow and loss. For the briefest of moments, Amelia almost grabs onto the hope that she misheard him. But then, she sees the look on his face - _really_ sees it - and any amount of hope that she may have had is ripped away once Owen says his name again. "It's Derek, Amelia."

Nothing is the same after that. (She doesn't see how anything ever could be.)

* * *

 **denial (is a funny thing)**

( _"...Two men in my family have been shot - one of them didn't survive it and even that I can't talk about because I was five and I barely remember it.")_

 _Two pennies._

 _She's five years old and sitting in the back of her father's convenience store. The two pennies he gave her are resting in the palm of her hand._

 _Amelia usually hid them in this big crack in the floor boards, but now she's rubbing them between her fingers, her imagination running wild with all the things she could get one day, eventually, if she just saved up enough. She wanted something big and meaningful and hers - not something that she'd have to share with her sisters or wait for them to outgrow. (_ _"It'll happen one day,"_ _Daddy always said, and Amelia believed him, because he'd never given her a reason not to.)_

 _The pennies feel cool against her skin and there's something about holding them that's comforting in a way that Amelia can't fully describe just yet. All she knew was that it was something that was hers to keep - nothing like the toys or itchy wool sweaters that used to belong to Lizzie and Kathleen, things that were only made Amelia's because they were no longer needed or wanted - and that made her feel…special._

( _"...You said you were saving them so you could buy a town.")_

 _When the pennies slip from her fingers it's sudden, unexpected and she's not ready for the fallout - she isn't paying attention, not really- and she tries to catch them, to hold onto what's hers, but she isn't quick enough. She can only watch them as they fall, landing on the linoleum with the quietest of clangs._

 _But that superficial loss is immediately forgotten once Amelia hears her father's voice. Even from the back of the store, she could hear him arguing with someone. Suddenly, his tone shifts and he's not arguing anymore - no, now he's pleading and almost begging, his exact words indecipherable over the sound of her heart beating loudly in her ears._

 _("They had already pulled the gun. They had already taken the money, but now they wanted the watch that mom gave him. He wouldn't give it up.")_

 _Christopher Shepherd was not a man who begged - not for anything or anyone. Amelia's father was known to be proud and stubborn, admittedly so, but he was also the kind of easygoing guy no one could ever say they had a problem with. But he's begging now, pleading with the deep, angry voices that will forever belong to the monsters in Amelia's nightmares._

 _They speak in a tone she doesn't recognize because she's never heard it before; the Shepherd home with its family of seven had always been a happy one - at least before this moment._

 _But Amelia knows that she should help, somehow, because_ it's Daddy _and he has always referred to Amelia as his "little helper" whenever she was at the store. She would stand behind the cash register and sort out the pennies from the nickels, dimes, and quarters and he would let her keep some - because no one ever really cared about the pennies. She understood that they were worth the least and for some reason people didn't seem to hold them in much regard. She helped him then and she knew she had to help him now._

 _Except, at the moment, there isn't anything Amelia can do to help - not because she doesn't want to, but because she can't. She's stuck, her body and limbs coiled tightly_ _together and she doesn't understand that it's because of Derek, wrapping his arms around her, tight enough for her to be able to feel his heart pounding through the back of her shirt - tight enough to leave bruises on her arms that will only start to fade three days from now (after their father's funeral). She can't get to him and she can't scream because it's Derek's hand covering her mouth, his fingers painfully gripping her cheeks and Amelia doesn't even know what's happening until it's over._

 _("There was a gunshot. You lunged forward_ _ _—_ "_

 _"I remember...I was trying to get to him, but I couldn't move.")_

 _It's a long time before either one of them move. Or it feels that way. Derek is shaking and Amelia's eyes are still shut tight, fear and terror keeping her from opening them. She still doesn't understand, not really, not even when the police come — men in uniform that Amelia vaguely recognizes as friends of her father, well-respected man of the people— and have to physically remove her from Derek's arms because he didn't (couldn't) let go even after the store went silent, even after the sound of the gunshot has stopped echoing (though it will leave Amelia's ears ringing for days afterwards)._

 _At first, she doesn't fully understand why she's crying — or why Derek's throwing up— but she can't stop and she knows, instinctively that something is wrong, seriously wrong, when she sees the bloodstains on the floor._

 _What happens next is a blur of activity over the next few days that Amelia doesn't really remember, except for the broad strokes: waiting at the police station, with her head on Derek's shoulder; the sounds of their mother crying through a closed door at night when Amelia was supposed to be sleeping; the feeling of fresh dirt, cold and gritty in between her fingers as she tossed it onto her father's casket, just before it was lowered into the ground. (Dust to dust.)_

 _Nothing is ever the same after that._

* * *

It didn't make any sense.

First Derek was in D.C. and then he wasn't, because he was back in Seattle, he was _home,_ and then, suddenly, Amelia is hearing from Owen that he's dead.

She doesn't understand where it all went wrong, doesn't understand how the hell this happened, doesn't understand how, when and why she got _here,_ to this moment: to her brother, The Great Derek Shepherd ( _he always hated whenever she called him that, because more often than not it meant that she_ _was mocking him_ ) being dead.

A week before her father was killed, Amelia remembers waking up one morning to find her goldfish floating belly-up in the small bowl sitting on top of her dresser. When she dragged Derek into the room she shared with Lizzie, and pointed at the fish with tears in her eyes, he tried to explain what was wrong, believing it to be his duty as the older brother. She didn't believe him when he said this wasn't the kind of nap her fish would wake up from. She didn't understand - didn't want to understand loss and what it meant just yet; she wasn't ready, but Derek was her big brother, and he held her hand as she said goodbye.

 _("…You were so little…I always wanted you just to stay little, quiet, and safe. But you're not any of those things. You…are loud and fearless and it scares the absolute crap out of me.")_

Now, it's more than twenty years later and it's a different loss that Amelia is unable to comprehend, that she cannot wrap her mind around. That she _refuses_ to wrap her mind around.

She finds two pennies on top of Zola's dresser and when she picks them up, it's like she's hiding in the back of that store all over again: where she's unknowingly holding onto the last vestiges of her childhood, moments before that innocence and naïveté was ripped away from her— right along with her father, the first man she's ever loved.

Except this time, it's different. She's not five years old anymore and her big brother, won't be there to save her.

Now, Amelia is standing in the hallway of the house her brother built, the home that he made for the family he was supposed to spend the next thirty or forty years with. There are framed pictures of the family he and Meredith created on the walls, chronicling birthdays and milestones, seeming to come to an end somewhere around Bailey's first Halloween. Amelia looks at them through tear-filled eyes, all the while trying not to scream at the thought of the future birthdays and first days of school that Derek won't be here to see.

 _People die all the time,_ she reminds herself as she stands in the bathroom, her hands gripping both sides of the sink in an effort to keep herself upright.

 _Everyday, in fact. It's not fair. It's never fair._ She stares into the mirror hanging on the wall above the sink, but doesn't really see her reflection. _...but it's nothing new and you've certainly been here before._ Amelia repeats that over and over again, her own personal mantra that is supposed to be enough to get her through this, day by day. One more step added to the twelve she's already living.

 _...You can handle it,_ she tells herself, over and over again, but it feels like a lie every single time.

* * *

 **anger (makes the heart grow colder)**

 _("I am not the person I thought I would be_ _… I keep trying to make the right choices for my family: Meredith and our kids_ _…you. But I am angry all the time; I am miserable and I don't know what to do with it. All I do is hurt people_ _…the last people that I want to hurt and I just can't get control of it. I don't know what to do anymore."_

" _I know how you feel._ _…It's called_ _rock bottom."_ )

 _She's fifteen and it feels as though she's been angry for so long that she can't remember ever feeling anything else._

 _It doesn't take long for Amelia to come to the realization that her sister Kathleen is wrong; the anger she feels is not a "stage" or a "phase" but, instead, a state of being._ _It's a part of who she is._

 _Anger, she's learned, is an even better weapon than the razor blade her best friend, Sadie, used to cut their crushed pills into beautifully perfect white lines the first time she decided snorting would get them a better high than swallowing them whole. (And of course, there was that one time Amelia got a little curious about how it would feel, pressed against her skin.)_

 _Her anger is a constant presence, one that rears its ugly head in the moments that she least expects it, because the control she's tried to keep on her emotions is gone once she started using._

 _"_ _ _ _—__ You are not the only one who lost him," Kathleen tells her one brutal Thanksgiving. They've been sniping at each other all afternoon. __Somehow, it's always Kathy that Amelia gets into it with; Kathleen, the psychiatrist, who always needs to be in control, always needs to analyze, always needs to let everyone know their place._ _"You don't get to act like a brat because of it, Amy."_

 _"Oh, yeah, I know. You love to remind me every chance you get."  
_

 _(Sometimes, Amelia swears that Kathy is so fucked up that she's jealous she wasn't the one Derek had to hold down to keep from screaming the second the gun went off. Amelia said that out loud once, and Kathy may have slapped her hard enough to make her taste blood but Amelia was too high to feel it and all she could do was laugh as Nancy and Lizzie did their best to keep the two of them apart.)_

 _It doesn't matter, really. She's already done two lines of Oxy in preparation of getting through this dinner and it's not the first time she's heard this spiel. She leaves, in the middle of Lizzie and Kathleen setting the table, storming out the back door and sitting on her old swing set that's still in the backyard. The swing set that's still there because her mother is busy, constantly working and Derek is a surgeon with a burgeoning practice who doesn't have the spare time and needs to preserve his hands._

 _Secretly, Amelia is pleased; when she closes her eyes, she can still feel her father's hands on her back and the wind in her hair as he pushed her forward. She never believed he wouldn't always be there, right behind her.  
_

 _When she opens her eyes, it's Addison standing in front of her and if Amelia wasn't so high she might've wondered more about the look on her sister-in-law's face and what it meant. But she didn't and so she doesn't see it coming when Addison quietly asks, with her hand on Amelia's forehead in a show of concern that's almost motherly, "...What did you take?"_

 _"Nothing," is her immediate response. Amelia tries to keep her voice flat and not to outwardly show any signs of panic, but it's too late. Addison sees right through her. "You can't tell Derek, Addie."_

 _"Amy," she chides gently and, inwardly, Amelia winces. Her father was the one who started the family's habit of calling her 'Amy', but every time she hears it now, it's just another reminder that he's gone._

 _"...I'm not judging," Addison is saying. "I'm just - I'm concerned, Amy, that's all. You can talk to me, you know."_

 _But all she hears is warning bells going off_ _, so Amelia does what she does best. She pushes Addison away with pointed words designed to hurt, builds a wall of anger that keeps her protected. "I don't need your concern. And why would I talk to you about anything that matters? Derek doesn't." She feels a stab of regret almost immediately once she sees the look on her sister-in-law's face, but Amelia doesn't allow herself to dwell on it. (She only knows about the recent rift between her brother and his wife from eavesdropping on her sisters, gossiping about which of them was the one who wasn't ready for children: Derek or Addison.)_

 _In the time it takes Addison to formulate a response, Amelia rushes back inside. She makes a beeline for the coat-rack by the door, where she knows inside of Derek's jacket pocket, are the keys to his Mustang. She grabs them, without thinking or caring of the consequences, just knowing that she can't be here when Addison tells Derek what she suspects to be true._

 _"Amy? Amy! Where are you going?"_

 _She slips behind the wheel, self-assured in spite of only having her learners permit for a few weeks now and the last thing she sees before the crash is Derek, standing in the road, as she glances in the rear view mirror._

* * *

The day of the funeral comes sooner than Amelia is ready for.

Conversely, throughout that day, Amelia can't help but feel as though she's trying to jog through quicksand; it could've only lasted for a few hours, but it feels like days have passed, ending and beginning all over again, by the time Derek's funeral is over.

It seems endless; the lines and lines of people that seemed to only get longer with every hug and pat on the shoulder or utterance of condolences. On the inside, Amelia simmers, that ever-present underlying anger bubbling underneath the surface, because anytime a well-meaning guest murmurs _"What happened?"_ she doesn't have an answer. ( _"I just don't understand,"_ her mother grieves across phone calls and voice mails, because her begging that same question at her only son's funeral wasn't enough.)

Amelia does what she can, in her own way, to make the house presentable and help with the kids because Meredith has practically been catatonic since she left the hospital. Maggie is better at housekeeping, better at being the one to make sure there's fresh food and clean sheets and socks that match for Zola and Bailey; while Amelia is better at making extra strong coffee and doing the funny voices when Zola requests _Where the Wild Things Are_ as a bedtime story for the hundredth time.

(Except it's only a distraction from the anger that thrums through her; from the burning desire Amelia has to scream every awful thought she's ever had about her brother's second wife every time she and Meredith are even in the same room together. Meredith, who pushes people away and avoids family like it's an infectious disease; Meredith, who doesn't seem to get that she isn't in this alone anymore, that she's not the only one who's hurting.)

But then, Meredith takes off in the middle of the night, taking Zola and Bailey without leaving so much as a Post-It Note, and the anger only increases once that distraction is gone.

Anger is a familiar emotion, one that she lived and breathed for the better part of a decade and so Amelia knows it well.

The anger is comforting, in a way; she wraps it perfectly around herself and warms her insides. It twists her thoughts and warps her words, cloaking them in the sharpest of knives so they're guaranteed to wound whoever has the misfortune of being nearby. Her anger kills two birds with one blood soaked stone: hurting "them" before they can hurt her, maintaining the distance Amelia needs to keep between her and everyone else that allows her to survive.

She's angry at Owen, for being the one to tell her in the scrub room of the hospital where she works that her only brother is dead; she's angry at Meredith for not telling her - or anyone else, for that matter - _anything_ specific about what the hell happened to her brother before leaving; for being the reason she ducks her own mother's calls. (Because she can't deal with her asking a question that Amelia still doesn't know the answer to.)

She's too angry to see Richard's worries for what they are: caring and friendly concern; one recovering addict checking in on another. She's too angry to think straight, to put aside her own hurt and consider anyone else's. " _…_ Really?" she snaps, after he shares Edwards' observations, which sound a lot like critiques of her behavior. "What else did _Edwards_ say?"

"I'm not accusing you," Richard insists and he might as well be waving a white flag of surrender, but Amelia can't ( _won't)_ see it. " _…_ I'm checking in. I get to check in. That's the kind of friends we are."

"I don't have time to _check in,"_ she snaps. "I don't have time for coffee. Do you know what could happen in the hour or two I would be wasting with you? An hour or two matters. They matter to my patients.

"Because if I leave and something should happen, it's not me who will suffer, it is his mother, his sisters, his friends, his wife and they will hate me because they won't understand why he's gone, why people always leave. Why everyone you give a crap about is ripped from your world without warning, without reason _—_ in convenience stores and plane crashes and Podunk hospitals with Podunk doctors who don't do what they're supposed to do, which is _save people_!"

Anger she can do. Anger she can handle.

* * *

 **bargaining tools**

 _(_ _"...I can't tell you about my pain. I don't even want you to know that pain exists.")_

 _Bartering is an underappreciated skill, she thinks._

 _She's gotten good at trading almost but-not-quite nothing for something, getting her end of the deal met. She's even better at ignoring the people who tell her that borrowed time runs out eventually and some day, her end is going to come up short._

 _Amelia gets sober and trades her (faded, spent, nonexistent) youth and college parties for all nighters in the med school library, preparing for an accelerated degree program. All to prove that it was worth it for Derek to pull her from his Mustang after she, high on stolen Oxy, wrapped it around a tree. That it wasn't a waste for the golden child, the Great Derek Shepherd, to have to breathe oxygen (life) into his baby sister's lifeless body; that those three minutes weren't a wasted effort. She's been bargaining every moment since then - trying to make up for waking up in that hospital room to her only brother not speaking to her - with a life that matters._

 _And for a while there, it works. She becomes a kickass neurosurgeon. She's found a way to balance her karma and shown everyone who doubted her that she can do so much more with borrowed time than they ever could, without it running out._

 _As it happens, it's not her that runs out of time, it's Michelle._

 _Michelle is her best friend, the one who takes her out dancing and_ _tells bad jokes that are so stupid they pull Amelia out of her darkest/lowest moments._ _She's a good person, who doesn't deserve the cruel fate that awaits a Huntington's diagnosis. Amelia pushes her to find out, convinces her that it's the not knowing that's stalled her more than the disease itself._

 _But, then, the test results arrive and one look at Michelle makes her realize how wrong she was._ _"...I mean, if I'm positive it's all over, anyway, right?" Michelle insists, feigning a casual air about what it could mean for the rest of her life. "_ _I don't want to wait around for the horror show to start."_

 _She and Michelle are different in so many ways, but in one way they are the same: when faced with the possibility of pain and sorrow, they will do everything they can - especially anything of the self-destructive variety - to avoid it, to push it down in a place inside of them that can't be reached. "The day my mother was diagnosed was the worst day of my life," Michelle confides in her, sitting uneasily on a chair in Amelia's office_ _. "But_ _today could actually top it. …Okay. I'm ready."_

 _When she opens the envelope, Amelia feels her breath leave her body with an exhaustive effort. Her knees feel weak and her stomach clenches as if she'd been punched, but she covers up her shock with a cough and an awkward shift of her feet. She is holding the fate of Michelle's life in her hands and so Amelia takes a risk, a gamble, and lies to her face. "…You're negative. You don't have it. You're not going to get Huntington's."_

 _Lying isn't easy, but she can't bear the truth. Not when it means Michelle doing whatever she can in order to outrun a clock that has already expired. It's better than facing the fact that she pushed her friend to do this, to know for sure, long before she was ever ready. Lying is a way to buy herself time, because she can fix this; she has to fix this._

 _(She wishes she'd never said anything.)_

 _Amelia tells herself that as long as there is no cure for Huntington's the best treatment she can give to Michelle is to tell her that she won't get it at all. But now she's not sure if she completely believes that. She just knows that the minute she tells Michelle the truth, her friend will be gone._

 _She's been grieving her whole life, she thinks, and she's not ready to say goodbye to someone else. Not yet._

 _Violet, her colleague and the therapist she confided in about Michelle while panicking over her potential reaction, frowns. "How is lying to her about the test results in any way going to help her?"_

" _She saw what this did to her mother. …_ _She's seen when it gets hard to swallow and the muscles go rigid._ _She has seen the clumsiness and the seizures. The dementia. And I don't blame her, but I have been through this before — losing somebody close to me way too soon and maybe it's selfish, but I can't go through that again._ _As_ _her doctor and as her friend, I need to protect her from that pain for as long as I can."_

 _Violet shakes her head. "It sounds to me like you're trying to justify this. You're right. You are being selfish." The truth hurts but Amelia knows she deserves it. "._ _..What are you going to tell Michelle when she wakes up one day with symptoms?"_

 _"I'm going to ask if she enjoyed the time she had. ._.. _And hope to God she says yes."_

 _"You know, as a recovering addict, honesty is always the best choice," Violet reminds her and Amelia hates that she's right. "You really_ _shouldn't have lied to her. ..._ _She's gonna need people that she can trust when she becomes symptomatic. I hope she can still trust you when that day comes."_

 _Amelia swallows hard, finally admitting out loud_ _what had her running scared in the first place. "...If I tell her the truth, she will take her own life."_

" _Then show her a reason to live."_

 _When she tells her the truth, Michelle is furious enough to avoid her for three days. Amelia lets her have her space because she knows, more than anything, that her friend is scared. When she approaches her outside her apartment building, Michelle stops before she can reach her, recognizing the look in Amelia's eyes. "Don't. I swear to God, Amelia, if you hug me right now I will lose it, because then you're doing it because you're sad for me, but you can't be sad for me before I'm sad for me. And I am too…_ scared _to be sad."_

 _"I know you are. And I know I shouldn't have lied but I just_ _—"_ _She stops, taking a moment to collect herself. What she said before about protecting Michelle from the pain of her diagnosis now doesn't seem to be enough._

 _"_ _...I didn't expect my father to die," she tries again. Despite the odd look Michelle gives her, she continues. "He was going to live forever because that's what dads do. And then one_ _day he went to work and he got shot. ...Life is hard. There's no way to predict what will happen, and right now is all anybody has. Right this minute," Amelia insists. "And as long as the good days outnumber the bad, you gotta live those days."_

 _Michelle shakes her head mournfully. "_ _But when you're not here, cheering me on, I don't know if I can make it through this."  
_

 _"I will be here for you, no matter what, until you take your last breath. And when the day comes when you feel your life really isn't worth living anymore..."_ _Here, Amelia takes a deep breath before ultimately promising, "…then I will kill you myself."_

 _(It's a promise that Amelia regrets the moment she makes it.)_

 _It's heavy on her mind while Michelle treks across Europe, after seeming to find the courage to see and do everything she's always wanted to, but put off for one reason or another. On one hand, is the dismal reality of Michelle's diagnosis; on the other, there is a freedom that comes with knowing she has nothing to lose. Which is exactly what Amelia is afraid of._ _Six months later, Michelle is back in L.A. and recounting her dalliances with Italian men, when it happens. She reaches for a glass of water only to be unable to even grasp it fully because of a tremor in her hand, followed by the unexpected jerk of her elbow._

 _"_ _ _…_ When did your symptoms start?" Amelia asks with a sense of urgency, that is only magnified by the pit of despair in her gut._

 _Michelle tells her that she's grateful for the time she's had, but she's ready. Amelia reasons with herself that as her friend, all she can do is support that choice_. _Besides that_ , _she made Michelle a promise and Amelia has always thought of herself as a woman of her word._

 _(At least when she's sober.)_

 _"_ _ _…_ I don't want to get you in trouble for this." __But Amelia shakes her head and tells her not to worry._

 _I made a promise_ , _Amelia reminds herself as she kneels on the floor of Michelle's living room while she is on the couch. She explains what each medication - a cocktail of drugs that essentially amounts to lethal injection - on the table in front of them will do to her body._

 _I made a promise, she tells herself again just before Michelle sits up, gasping for air, her eyes wide, wild, and filled with panic._

 _Maybe it's a sign, Amelia thinks, grasping at straws as she explains to her friend that she seems to be having an adverse reaction to the benzodiazepines. Maybe this isn't the way I'm supposed to help her._

 _Relief wouldn't even begin to describe what Amelia feels when she walks into that hospital room and Michelle is still alive, still here, still breathing. She doesn't have to grieve her yet._

 _"We can be a screwed up version of the buddy system: I won't drink today as long as you don't kill yourself," Amelia promises with a weak laugh. "_ _ _…_ Deal?"_

 _"Deal."_ _And as Michelle looks up at her, with what looks like a renewed sense of hope reflected in her eyes, Amelia starts to think that maybe she's better at this bargaining thing than she thought._

 _...Until the next night,_ _when she finds Michelle laying prone and unmoving on her bed, a half empty bottle of Oxycontin beside her, and Amelia realizes it wasn't hope at all. It was resignation.  
_

 _"_ _ _…Yo_ u okay, ma'am?" asks the responding officer, after he confirms Michelle's suicide. "Is_ _there someone we can call for you?"_

 _"I just lost my friend so, no, I'm not okay." Out of sight of the officer's gaze, Amelia holds two pills in the palm_ _of her hand. She waits until the front door closes behind him before swallowing them down with a gulp of her wine._

 _With Michelle's broken promise in mind, Amelia decides there's no point to keeping hers. With a heady sigh, she closes her eyes and waits for the drugs to overtake her._

* * *

 **depression, suppression, repression**

 _("_ _ _…_ One day, this friend gave me a pill and I took it. And suddenly I felt okay, better than okay. I felt great.")_

Two pills.

She holds them in the middle of her hand and there's something about the weight of them that feels familiar; it is both a burden and a relief.

They feel heavy.

Amelia tells herself that two pills is all she needs, that two pills is nothing - nothing compared to the bag of black market Oxy she has stashed in her purse. _"Don't turn a slip into a fall,"_ a caution she was once given, echoes in the back of Amelia's mind.

Two pills wouldn't be a relapse, just a slip. A stumble on the long road of recovery. Stumbles happen; no journey to lasting sobriety happens without them. At least that's what she tells herself. Except she can't get Derek's voice out of her head.

 _("You ever think about doing drugs again—"_

 _"Remember this?"_

 _"I was going to say "call me". I'll fly down to Los Angeles and knock some sense into you. But, okay, yeah. Remember this. And if that doesn't work—"_

 _"Yeah, you can totally kick my ass then."_

 _"Done._ _…Lo_ _ve you, Amy.")_

"...Every man I've ever loved has died...including my baby," she finds herself admitting to Owen after a particularly rough day.

It was easy to call Ryan the love of her life. Simpler - because it meant the two of them had something, _meant_ something. That their short-lived relationship and whirlwind engagement wasn't just about Amelia running away from what happened with Michelle ( _and her_ _father_ , _always her father_ ) and burying her pain in a mountain of Oxy. If Ryan was the love of her life, then he was more than just an addict who got her pregnant during a twelve day drug binge; he's the love of her life and the father of her ( _only_ ) child. He wasn't just a band-Aid slapped over a gunshot wound in human form.

But the further away she gets from that moment, and the person she was when she and Ryan collided into each other, the more Amelia wonders just how true that really was.

She didn't have a choice before; it was just weeks after Ryan died and Amelia finished rehab when she found out she was pregnant. There was no escaping the loss she felt, nothing she could use as a distraction. Because her baby may not have stood a chance at life, being born without a brain, but there was still hope for all of the babies and children her baby could save with his donated organs. So, she couldn't afford to numb the pain her usual way the last time she was faced with losing a man that she loved.

But there's nothing to stop her from doing that now.

There is only Owen, standing in front of her on the porch of the house her brother no longer lives in - because he's dead and his wife is gone and who knows if she's ever coming back - and a lot more than two pills, sitting comfortably at the bottom of Amelia's bag.

" _…_ I've been managing the "dead-Derek" thing really well," she tells him. But it feels like a lie; because if she's being honest with herself, Amelia hasn't actually allowed herself to _feel_ the full weight of what that means. Not yet.

"Okay," Owen murmurs, just to let her know he's listening.

"Except today," Amelia admits, "I yelled at Richard when all he was trying to do was invite me for coffee and be a friend. _…_ And then I went and scored Oxy from this junkie doctor."

Owen's eyes widen in surprise, but there doesn't seem to be any judgment in his gaze when he looks at her. "But you haven't taken any?"

"Not yet. But I might," she confesses with a loaded sigh. And there's a part of her that feels good to let it out and, another part, that hates that it's a part of her at all. "That's the thing. I really, actually might. I have been sober for 1,321 days, Owen. I was fine. I was managing. _…_ But I _really_ might."

"All this stuff you're _managing_ _…._ You're not supposed to be _managing_ it. You're supposed to be _feeling_ it: grief, loss, pain. All of this, it's normal."

Amelia frowns. "It's not _normal_ -"

"It is. It _is_ normal," Owen insists imploringly. "It's not normal to you 'cause you've never done it. Instead of feeling it, feeling the grief and the pain, you've shoved it all down and covered it up with drugs. Instead of moving through the pain, you run from it. You - Instead of dealing with being hurt and alone and afraid that this horrible, empty feeling is all there is, _I_ run from it. I run off, and I sign up for another tour of active duty. We do these things. We run off, and we - we medicate."

For the first time, Amelia looks at Owen with mutual understanding. He may not be an addict like her, but she realizes now just how much he gets it, explains it in a way that is so much more than people have assumed to be about her being a flake or melodramatic.

"We do whatever it takes to cover it up and dull the sensation, but it's not normal. We're supposed to feel. That is human. That is humanity. That's - that's being _alive_. That's the point. That's the _entire_ point. Don't avoid it. Don't extinguish it."

" _…_ Derek died." It's not the first time she's heard it, or even said it out loud. Anpd she's known this to be true, has been grappling with it since that moment in the scrub room when Owen first broke the news. And since the funeral; since Meredith left in the middle of the night without a word, and every mundane moment since then. It's been this echo, at the back of her mind, but she's pushed it down and denied its meaning for the longest time, never really listening. Until now.

Now; when she can either face it and allow herself to feel it, to get through it and not just bury it, or she can say goodbye to those 1,321 days of sobriety that she fought so hard for. And this time, Amelia honestly has no idea if she could make it back to that point if she allowed herself to fall this time. " _…_ I don't want to feel it. I- I don't think I can. I don't think I even want to - I can't. I can't do this, Owen. I _can't_."

"You have to. If you don't, that bag of Oxy's not gonna be your last." She turns away, but Owen is faster and he pulls her into a tight embrace that she can't escape. It's as if a dam has broken and Amelia finally lets go of everything she's been keeping buried deep inside of herself, where she'd somehow convinced herself was safe and no one could reach. Her body wracked with sobs, Amelia would have collapsed to the ground if it wasn't for Owen's arms around her, his solid presence keeping her upright.

"You're gonna be okay," he murmurs soothingly. "You're gonna survive this, okay? _…_ Everybody does."

(And, in spite of everything, Amelia thinks that he just might be right and that, eventually she will be.)

* * *

It's not easy with Meredith.

When it comes to fixing their relationship, it's as if they take one reluctant step forward and twelve terrified steps back.

On the one hand, there is the Meredith who invites her to stay in her home, to be a part of this new family of three kids and a dead husband that she's adjusting to; but then there is the Meredith who decides to hire Penny Blake - a woman whose incompetence and lack of faith in her own abilities as a doctor were partially responsible for Derek's death - as a new fellow, without so much as a hint thrown in Amelia's direction.

Funnily enough, Amelia finds, bonding is easier with Maggie, the half sister-in-law that feels more like family than the (second) woman her brother married. It isn't fair to compare the two, Amelia knows, but she can't help it. Addison was The First Wife; she was twelve Christmases and Thanksgivings, the one who took Amelia to get her ears pierced and talked to her about birth control and helped her get ready for junior prom. Addison was the reason Amelia wanted to become a doctor; Derek was the reason she became a neurosurgeon. And while Derek's face was the first thing Amelia saw when she opened her eyes after crashing his Mustang and overdosing on the Oxy she scored using his prescription pad, Addison's was the second.

 _("...I missed you, Addie," Amelia finds herself admitting to her former sister-in-law. It was always easier to talk to Addison, it seems. Her mother may have never really warmed up to her during hers and Derek's marriage, but Amelia would always see Addison as her closest sister. "_ _…Yo_ _u know, you were always a better sister than the ones I had. And you were_ _way_ _better than my brother."_

 _"…Are things okay between you two?" Addison asked with sincere concern, always trying to bridge the slightly fractured gap between brother and sister._

 _"He's the golden child. Things are always okay with him." But Amelia swears that she's not bitter about that._

 _No, she's not.)_

But Meredith isn't Addison; she doesn't slide into the role of sister with the ease that Amelia's former sister-in-law did, in a way that made it obvious that having a little sister was something Addison probably always wanted. Even unintentionally, Meredith has made it abundantly clear how much she and Addison differ in that respect.

Amelia knows that Meredith is not an emotionally open or available kind of person, that it's never been easy for her to let people in. That she is a woman of many layers and there are, of course, many reasons that explain why she is the way that she is, but it still hurts to be met with Meredith's cold indifference with regards to Owen and how whatever is going on with him and Riggs could potentially affect their relationship.

" _…_ Why are you shutting me out of this?"

"Because this does not concern you," Meredith says, all but rolling her eyes as she answers.

"But it concerns _you_?"

"No, it doesn't. But I made a promise that I would help Owen keep his head above water."  
"A promise to who?"

"To Cristina," Meredith replies, her tone leading Amelia to believe that, in Meredith's mind at least, the response was obvious and that Amelia shouldn't even have asked. "I made a promise to Cristina. So I am watching him, and I am letting him be, and I am not sticking my nose _—_ "

"What does Cristina have to do with this?" Amelia demands, intentionally cutting her off. "You're in some sort of three-way trust circle with Owen and his ex-girlfriend?"

"Ex- _wife_ ," Meredith corrects her. And there's something about her needing to make that distinction right here and now - in the middle of what feels like one of those arguments that will be hard to come back from - that really pisses Amelia off. She gets it; she heard the stories from Derek about Meredith and Cristina, the "twisted sisters" who shared a bed (regardless of whose husband or boyfriend was already in it) whenever one of them was dealing with a crisis. But Amelia isn't asking for that. She isn't trying to "replace" Cristina or whatever it is that Meredith seems to think. She just needs Meredith to give a little, a fraction of an inch.

" _God,"_ Amelia scoffs in disbelief. "Meredith, you are the most loyal person I have ever met to everyone _except_ me. You're loyal to some woman halfway across the world _—_ "

"Yes, I am."  
" _—_ when I am _right here_. Cristina left you. _I'm_ here. I'm your sister!"

"You are not my sister," Meredith responds, almost immediately, her voice cold and emotionless. Amelia gapes in response. "Cristina is my sister. Lexie was my sister. _You_ are Derek's sister, and Derek is gone."

With impeccable timing as always, Penny Blake interrupts before she can respond. " _…_ Dr. Grey, I changed the mediastinal drains _—_ "

" _Get out,_ " Amelia snaps, barely turning to even address her. "Is this why you hate me? Because I remind you of him? Does it help you to hate me?"

"I am asking you not to push me on this."  
"Am I like her?" she demands, referring to Blake with open disdain. "Something you cling to to keep the memory alive?

"You are _such_ a child _—_ "  
"You wrap her around you like some sick widow shawl," Amelia sneers, continuing her rant out of spite. There's no stopping her, not now that she's finally letting herself feel the full extent of her anger and Meredith has let Amelia know how she really feels. It hurts - although she would never admit it out loud - and Amelia responds to hurt the way that she usually does: by lashing out.

(Some things never change.)

"...The widow Grey. She's okay. She's moving on. She'll never love again, but she's holding it together. That is _crap_. You've given up. You are crawling into your little hole and dying. You are _hollow_. And Derek would be sick about it if he could see it. He would be disgusted."

Except Meredith hardly seems to react, her eyes and mouth twitching in a barely noticeable flinch.

" _…_ I want you out of my house," Meredith says, after a brief moment of heavy silence. Her voice is stone cold but Amelia refuses to let it be known how much she's hurt her.  
" _Done."_

It's not a baggie full of black market Oxy that spells her undoing or ultimately sends her spiraling towards her next relapse. Instead, it's a vodka tonic ordered with purpose and shared later that night with Nathan Riggs, the man Owen seems to have an intense hatred for, but won't tell Amelia the reason why. Though apparently Owen has no problem opening up to Meredith, the least emotionally available person she knows.

 _Go figure,_ Amelia thinks scowling at the irony.

Riggs _"cheers"_ her to a better tomorrow while she presses the glass to her lips and with the bittersweet taste of alcohol on her tongue, says good bye to 1,686 days of sobriety.

* * *

 **acceptance (the long and winding road)  
**

 _("...Life will always find a way to continue. Life will out.")_

She's too hungover to deal with whatever it is that she and Meredith have been doing lately - though it's mostly amounted to the two of them avoiding each other - so instead of answering the page to trauma one, Amelia takes trauma three and puts off being in a room with her (former? _Well, if it were up to Meredith...,_ Amelia thinks bitterly _)_ sister-in-law for as long as possible.

So when she walks into trauma room one, Amelia expects to see just another patient in need of a neuro consult. Instead, she is dumbstruck by the sight of Meredith lying on top of a gurney, writhing and screaming in pain, muffled only by the oxygen mask covering the lower half of her face as the roomful of their colleagues attend to her injuries. Her body is a mottled hue of blue and purple bruises. Amelia must be in shock, she thinks, because every question that would be asked if this were anybody else, any other patient, leaves her mind.

And all she can think is, _Great_. _I did_ _it again. Here comes another funeral_.

She doesn't know how long it takes them to stabilize Meredith, but hours have passed by the time she looks up from her spot on the dirty hospital floor to find trauma one empty, except for the blood, shards of broken glass, and medical instruments strewn about as a result of Meredith's attack. "...you okay, Amelia? Amelia?"

She blinks and Maggie's tear-stricken face comes into view, blurry at first before coming into focus. "...Is she dead?"

Maggie shakes her head, though the saddened look in her eyes remains. "No. _No_ ; she's alive." _Barely,_ is the unspoken part of that sentence. "She's got a long road of recovery ahead but, she's going to be okay."

With Maggie's help, Amelia rises on unsteady legs. She takes a moment to look at the still wrecked room, imagining what exactly Meredith went through during those few minutes, terrified and alone; probably wondering why this was happening to her.

"...It was a patient," Maggie says quietly and Amelia wonders if she'd spoken out loud without realizing. "He was in a postictal state when he attacked...He doesn't even remember what he did."

"Lucky him," Amelia murmurs. The attendings' lounge is empty and Amelia breathes a sigh of relief that she's not on call tonight. She doesn't need a repeat of L.A. and Oceanside Wellness: of falling down drunk off a bar, stitching up her own hand, and then, later that same night, operating on her friend's brain after a heart attack nearly caused him to stroke out.

"I know you and Meredith had a...thing," Maggie awkwardly starts to comment but before she can say anymore, Amelia is adamantly shaking her head as she shrugs off her lab coat and shoves her arms into the sleeves of her leather jacket.

"It doesn't matter."

"Of course it does _—"_

"No, it doesn't. She told me herself. _I_ don't matter. Not anymore. Our sisterly bond or link or whatever was severed the minute that semi slammed into my brother. Or was it a pickup?" Amelia asks rhetorically.

"Whatever she said, I know she didn't mean it," Maggie insists. "You know how she's been without Derek...up and down, hot and cold. It's not about _you,_ not really _._ ...You have to know that."

It certainly sounds nice, but Amelia isn't convinced, especially not after today. Because now, on top of an already strained relationship there's this, something Amelia can't help but think she could have prevented, maybe, if only she hadn't let her own pettiness get in the way.

(But it does sound nice.)

 _"...You always have to learn things_ _the hard way,"_ Derek told her once. It was more of an admiration than a scold at the time, as he recalled the way she overcame her years long fear of fireworks. She associated the sound of them exploding with the memory of gunshots they'd heard the day of their father's murder. She'd gone out to the lake near their home with several boxes worth and set them off, one by one, until she finally stopped flinching at the sound of them and she finally felt safe.

It wasn't enough for her to just be told something, she needed the experience to get it for herself.

Amelia certainly learns the hard way when she comes back way past visiting hours and five - _okay, seven_ \- vodka tonics deep, and Richard stops her at the door before she can even go in. Looking back on the moment through sober eyes, Amelia knows that Richard did her a favor, that the last thing Meredith needed or wanted was her drunkenly apologizing and inadvertently making what happened about her when it definitely wasn't.

It takes her thirty days before she's able to go without a drink again, which makes it thirty days before she can actually have a conversation face-to-face, rather than lurking outside her hospital room like she's been doing throughout Meredith's recovery.

"...I get it, okay? I know I'm a mess," Amelia acknowledges. "A mess who talks too much and feels too much. ...I know that it drives you crazy, but that is the one way I know how to stay sober, and every time I try to suck it up and shut up and just be cold and normal, I end up drunk or on pills. Or at a funeral."

A look of understanding flits across Meredith's face as Amelia reaches into the pocket of her jeans. "It's my 30-day chip," she clarifies, placing the object on the tray next to Meredith's hospital bed. "I'm sober. And I'm starting back at work on Monday, so I thought you should know. I'm just - I'm trying, you know? I'm trying."

"I know you are," Meredith acquiesces after a moment of silence passes between them. "I'm just _…_ not ready to forgive you yet."

Amelia nods, because she gets it. " _…_ I'm not exactly ready to forgive you, either." She doesn't know when she'll be able to forgive Meredith pulling the plug on Derek before Amelia could say goodbye. (Or when Meredith will forgive her for being the "wrong" Shepherd.)

She just knows she needs more time. They both do.

(" _He loved her. That's what I hold onto. That has to mean something."_

 _It does.)_


End file.
